There’s a mystery on display at the Mt. Blanco Fossil Museum in Crosbyton, Texas: What appears to be evidence of man-made artifacts that were embedded in sandstone reported to be 300 million years old.

Curator Joe Taylor recently molded a series of depressions left by four strange objects that left behind impressions in hard Pennsylvanian sandstone – a layer of strata said to be 300 million years old.

The appearance of the objects is similar to modern plumbing valves, complete with hex-head nuts. The site of the discovery is within the tri-state area of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri. Its precise location is being kept under wraps until a further investigation has concluded.

No one knows when the actual objects themselves, which made the depressions, were removed. Chisel marks are discernable at the small ends of the impressions, likely from someone prying the objects loose.

“You can see shatter marks around them,” Taylor said. “That means something was in those depressions.”

The current whereabouts of the objects are also unknown.

Todd Jurasek was alerted to the existence of the impressions by an elderly, Native American WWII veteran. Jurasek in turn contacted Joe Taylor, known for his skill in creating successful molds in difficult locations and conditions.

“I molded the depressions where the objects had been,” Taylor said. “Then I molded that mold and cast it – which gives us the objects’ shape.”

Fossils of sea creatures are often found in Pennsylvanian sandstone, but what were man-made, metal-type objects doing in ancient strata?

“There’s an obvious problem here,” Taylor said. “All the people who say this formation is 300 million years old would also say no man or mammals existed then. So what’s modern plumbing-like equipment doing in there? Either the formation isn’t that old, or man was around before the dinosaurs. If that’s the case, the evolution story they tell in schools can’t be true.”

Pennsylvanian sandstone is quite hard, ruling out any possibility the impressions were created by modern-day equipment that sank into the rock.

“You have foundations of buildings made from this sandstone,” Taylor said, “because it won’t sink. You’ve got to chisel it to get anything in there.”

Both Pennsylvanian sandstone and coal seams are alleged to have yielded up metal artifacts in the past.

“But no one ever saved the coal,” Taylor said. “If they found a bowl or bell in the coal, they never saved the coal itself. So you don’t know if the object came from a gift shop.”

The Oklahoma impressions are a game changer.

“This is the matrix – this is what the objects were in. And it can’t be moved because it’s the bottom of a long creek. It’s proof positive the objects were there.”

Taylor is the curator and director of the Mt. Blanco Fossil Museum. As one of the foremost fossil restorationists in the nation, his work is sought out by collectors, museums, and institutions in the U.S. and abroad.

“I’m part of a circle of friends,” Taylor said. “Guys who will invest our own time and money, when we have very little of it, to go do this kind of work. I call us the dirty hands creationists, the dirty hands paleontologists.”

Taylor supports a theory that the objects were buried in a massive flood.

“They were made by descendants of Adam within the last six thousand years. The biblical timeline says Adam was created six thousand years ago … and his descendant Tubal-cain began working with metal. At the time of Noah’s Flood, you’d had metal working for centuries.”

He opposes a gradualism view of geological epochs. Instead Taylor favors a catastrophism view, in line with Genesis accounts, which maintains that the Earth was shaped by sudden, violent events.

The flood, Taylor said, caused a massive upheaval. Rushing mud and outflowing water courses carried away buildings and artifacts and resulted in new layers of strata over a short period of time.

Then the abatement of the floodwaters carved out deep canyons all over the world.

“Where these objects were discovered,” Taylor said, “the abatement cut down through these newly laid sandstone layers and got down to the bottom of this layer, then just became a creek. In the following 4,500 years, rains came in and washed on down and finally exposed these things.”

Plans are in place for Jurasek to return to the site with a metal detector.

“We don’t know if there are more objects under the layers there,” Taylor said.

Two other impressions are located farther up the creek, one of which is significantly eroded.

See Taylor’s analysis:

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To reach the remote location on private ranchland, Taylor hiked over rough, broken ground, a hike made more difficult by the intense pain of nerve spasms in his leg.

Taylor told himself “You may only have one chance to get this – so you’ve got to just suffer through it.”

Arriving at the creek bed, Taylor first satisfied himself the depressions hadn’t been carved.

“It’s in a corner of the creek that’s usually under water. It’s not something anybody carved. If you could carve that [for a mold], you could just make the machine that would reproduce it, so you don’t need to carve them.”

Taylor hopes publicity will lead to the discovery of the objects’ current location.

“It would be great if someone saw an article on this and said, you know, Grandpa had something like that in his old shop – and maybe it’s still there. If anyone finds something like that, we would sure like to see it.”

Casts made from Taylor’s molds will be permanently on display at the Mt. Blanco Fossil Museum.

“You can deny it if you want to – but I was there,” Taylor said. “It’s in the sandstone. This can’t be 300 million years old. Even if they said it was only three million, are you going to have a half-ape, half-man making these things? No. All that millions of years stuff isn’t true. Man wasn’t inferior the further back you go – he was superior.”

Harvey Weinstein is a sexual predator who was among an elite group protected by both Hollywood and the mainstream media because of his connections.

It is no secret that success in life can often stem from who you know—but while the connections you make may be willing to vouch for your character in some instances, would they continually work to protect your reputation by suppressing the truth and ignoring dozens of allegations of sexual assault?

In the case of elite moguls like Harvey Weinstein, the answer is yes.

The women who have come forward about their encounters with Weinstein have told stories of a sex-obsessed Hollywood producer who used his ability to give them a role in a movie that would launch their career as an excuse to sexually assault them. But it was not just Weinstein—he had an entire team behind him, enabling his behavior.

In a lawsuit accusing Weinstein of violating sex-trafficking laws, British actress Kadian Noble claimed Weinstein enticed her to come up to his hotel room to discuss a possible role in a movie.

When Weinstein began touching Noble, and she indicated that she was uncomfortable, she said he put her on the phone with a producer from his company. The producer told Noble that “she needed to be ‘a good girl and do whatever he wished,’ and if she did, then ‘they would work’ with her further.”

However, Harvey’s protection extended beyond The Weinstein Company. According to a report from The New York Times, Weinstein held the coveted title of “F.O.P” or “Friend of Pecker,” which signaled his close friendship with David Pecker, the chief executive of American Media Inc. who is responsible for publications such as the National Enquirer, Star, Sun, Weekly World News and Globe.

In addition to avoiding negative press from the magazines and tabloids owned by his friends, the Times also claimed that many of the journalists who covered stories about Weinstein sought his approval, and they often “negotiated book and movie deals with him” in the process of covering stories about him.

“Weinstein held off press scrutiny with a mix of threats and enticements, drawing reporters close with the lure of access to stars, directors and celebrity-packed parties.

Some journalists negotiated book and movie deals with him even as they were assigned to cover him. The studio chief once paid a gossip writer to collect juicy celebrity tidbits that Mr. Weinstein could use to barter if other reporters stumbled onto an affair he was trying to keep quiet.”

Weinstein’s close friends included Jeff Bezos, chief executive of Amazon and owner of the Washington Post. According to the report from the Times, Bezos reached out to Weinstein over email when he was concerned about the Wall Street Journal publishing a negative story on the environment at Amazon Studios.

Weinstein replied and said he was “happy to coordinate with whoever you’d like, as a friend of the court.” He encouraged Bezos to hit back at the Wall Street Journal with an aggressive response, and offered Bezos the services of Weinstein’s libel lawyer who “makes sure everyone sticks to the right narrative.”

Weinstein’s reputation as a sexual predator was not a secret in the industry. While several actresses have said they warned other women about Weinstein, agents and managers were also aware of Weinstein’s reputation—yet they still “sent actresses to meet him alone at hotels and advised them to stay quiet when things went wrong.”

“Agents and managers across Hollywood, who wanted in on Mr. Weinstein’s star-making films, sent actresses to meet him alone at hotels and advised them to stay quiet when things went wrong. ‘That’s just Harvey being Harvey,’ more than one agent told a client.

At [Creative Artists Agency], for example, at least eight talent agents were told that Mr. Weinstein had harassed or menaced female clients, but agents there continued to arrange private meetings.”

While this report is from The New York Times, it should be noted that in addition to being a part of the mainstream media, the Times has been directly responsible for censoring reports that could have exposed Weinstein’s actions 13 years ago.

Former New York Times reporter Sharon Waxman claimed that she attempted to reveal the truth about Weinstein in 2004.

She flew to Italy to investigate claims of a man who was paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to schedule Russian escorts for Weinstein. But when Weinstein found about the possibility of Waxman’s report being published, he convinced the Times to shut it down.

“The story I reported never ran,” Waxman wrote. “After intense pressure from Weinstein, which included having Matt Damon and Russell Crowe call me directly to vouch for Lombardo and unknown discussions well above my head at the Times, the story was gutted. I was told at the time that Weinstein had visited the newsroom in person to make his displeasure known.”